Red Scare at the Smithsonian? Battle Brews over Portrayal of Latino History in Planned New Museum

A political battle is brewing in Washington, D.C., over plans to build a National Museum of the American Latino and the portrayal of American Latino history. Last year, the Smithsonian Institution opened a temporary preview exhibition inside the National Museum of American History that has become the focus of controversy within the Latino community, as Republican lawmakers and others challenge what one conservative writer described in The Hill as an "unabashedly Marxist portrayal of history." We speak to two historians who were hired to develop a now-shelved exhibit on the Latino civil rights movement of the 1960s for the museum. Felipe Hinojosa is a history professor at Baylor University in Texas, and Johanna Fernández is an associate professor of history at the City University of New York's Baruch College. We discuss their vision for the first national museum dedicated to Latino history, which Hinojosa describes as "complex" and "nuanced," and how conservative backlash has sought to stymie and rewrite their work. "These conservatives are using fear to essentially push through their agenda," says Fernández, who warns that the rising wave of censorship throughout the U.S. could be a "repeat of the Red Scare."